Unique US play coming to Delhi

Concrete Temple Theatre New York is on its first tour of India with a one-man play The Whale, based on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, considered one of literature’s greatest epics. Read on...

Concrete Temple Theatre New York is on its first tour of India with a one-man play

HT Image

The Whale

, based on Herman Melville’s

Moby Dick

, considered one of literature’s greatest epics.

Sponsored by the American Embassy, the theatre troupe had its first show in Chennai on August 7 and will perform in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore before travelling to Colombo.

The Delhi workshop will be held on September 13, and the show will be held at Sai Auditorium on September 14.

Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer American Embassy Peter Eisenhauer told HT: “The reason why we wanted to bring this theatre to India is because it is an unusual play providing a very powerful and intense experience with its novel technique, use of props and adaptation.

“A great classic of American literature, this timeless psychological and philosophical work came out in 1851 and uses the same language used in the same but the way it is presented is able to project some of its power and emotion into a short experience of one hour,” he said. Well received by critics in the US and UK, Carlo Adinolfi, who is the co-artitistic director of the theatre and also the main performer in The Whale transforms the whole stage into the whaling ship and characters in the ship, he added.

As Philip Fisher in the British Theatre Guide puts it: “Using only his body, voice, and an extraordinary collection of hand-crafted and rigged props to create life on a whale ship, Adinolfi, a dancer and actor by training, puts into service a variety of storytelling traditions. The effect of one man embodying this enormous literary epic in 60 minutes (using Melville’s text) is simultaneously playful and profound.”